This new collection from British Library Crime Classics features some of the greatest mystery tales from the Golden Age of detective fiction to be based around food and drink. Complete with a well-stuffed introduction from expert editor, anthologist and crime author Martin Edwards, detailing the fascinating role of what we imbibe to the genre, this anthology includes tales from the likes of Dorothy L Sayers, Michael Gilbert and EC Bentley, and is sure to leave readers hungry and wanting more.

Elderly Mrs. Rampage lives alone in a large London house full of the antiques and heirlooms she’s collected over the years. But she’s struggling to cope, and as her only daughter lives thousands of miles away, she is persuaded to advertise for a housekeeper and companion. Reluctantly, she accepts the courteous and capable Mrs. Roach into No 5 to help her.

With few possessions of her own, Mrs. Roach is in desperate need of a place to stay, but she soon has her own ideas about how things should be run in the house. And as Mrs. Rampage grows increasingly protective of her knick-knacks, and pushes at the boundaries of her new companion’s personal privacy, the pair’s initially amicable relationship soon turns sour. Before long, both women are thoroughly miserable, but stuck in unhappy coexistence with nowhere else to go. When Mrs. Roach digs in and makes it her duty to stay, the lives of both women become entangled in catastrophic circumstances.

The Spring House artfully balances humour and devastation; at once a deftly written psychological portrait and a social document revealing the slow birth of the twentieth century and the new woman.

Meanwhile, holidaying in Paris, the ex-spy Kenwood Blake runs into Evelyn Cheyne and is swept into a perilous chase ending at the Chateau de l’Ile on a stormy night. Here, Ramsden’s plane has made an emergency landing, and Henry Merrivale has joined the party. When the castle is cut off by the flooding river, the stage is set for a battle of wits between two masters of disguise in Flamande and Gasquet, as a bizarre and seemingly impossible murder among the party casts suspicion in every direction – and the mystery of the unicorn is revealed.

Carter Dickson’s brilliantly intricate mystery was first published in Britain in 1936; it remains a testament to his unique talent for wrangling audacious levels of devilishness into a masterpiece.

While Senior History Master of Queen’s School, Newminster, Carolus Deene has a troubling hobby as a criminologist and sometime sleuth. Even more troublingly, he has jaundice. But with the papers shouting of the crimewave sweeping the seaside resorts of England, sending him to the coast to recover is too risky for the Headmaster – he will be much further from trouble in the inland spa resort of Buddington.

But before long Buddington is rocked by a twisted double-murder – two elderly women found dead on the same night at the same time, each with a white lily by their side. Perhaps things are looking up for the curious Deene?

First published in 1960, Leo Bruce’s classic mystery hums with his trademark wit and comedic flair, centred around an intelligent puzzle and a memorable cast of Buddington’s best.

As warm sunshine bathes the streets of Paris in the late 1800s, the lively young debutante May meets the cotton-broker John Tyler. Far from a picturesque romance, life with the boorish broker turns sour as they move to Manchester and May finds herself trapped in a world of hostile servants and neglect. When Tyler meets his end from an overdose of arsenic – the drug which he was so fond of prescribing himself as a kind of panacea – May is dragged into a trial coloured by the public’s hunger to paint her as a beguiling murderess.

Based on the real-life murder trial of Florence Maybrick in 1899, this novel spins the gripping tale of a case clouded by sensation, its unsolved mysteries, and the untold story of the human being at its heart. First published in 1943, it was filmed as The Mark of Cain in 1947.